Karoline Herfurth’s Simply Something Beautiful is the perfect cinematic comedy, but it has one big problem: men

Acting, screenplay, direction – Karoline Herfurth is a multi-talent and therefore also damn successful. In early 2022, 2 million people watched her socially critical comedy Beautiful, since today is running with Simply something beautiful her next film in the cinemas.

Simply something beautiful is funny, human, touching and sometimes even hurts. The film works with pleasure on the clichés from which other love films are sometimes more, sometimes less obviously stapled together. It’s all the more regrettable that the biggest and only weakness of the film lies in what the unusual romcom actually seems to want to undermine: the central love story.

Simply Something Beautiful is a family catastrophe between blood, alcohol and love that hurts

Just something nice starts with an abortion. Karla (Karoline Herfurth) is pregnant, but her boyfriend does not see herself as ready for the next step despite a three-year relationship, so the frustrated radio presenter says goodbye (for the time being) to her desire to have children, only to be left by her unfaithful partner afterwards. But instead of being taken care of by her family, they are confronted with completely new problems.

Karla’s older sister Jule (Nora Tschirner) seems frustrated with children, husband and job, the youngest sister Johanna (Milena Tscharntke) tries desperately to have the perfect relationship with her professional soccer fiancée. And since father Robert (Herbert Knaup) left mother Marion (Ulrike Kriener) for someone else, she has been drinking hard liquor into the false certainty that she doesn’t need anyone. Karla finally decides having a child all by yourself via sperm donation. She is only supported by her best friend Senay (Jasmin Shakeri).

There is also love, pain and wit in Karoline Herfurth’s film Beautiful:

As in her other cinema films before, Karoline Herfurth, together with the other screenwriters Monika Fässler and Tim Hebborn, manages to bring sympathetic, imperfect female characters to the screen who feel real even in the most over-the-top situations.

Just something nice is always strongest when the sisters lock themselves together in the toilet and try to support each other despite all differences of opinion. However, Ulrike Kriener manages the perfect balancing act between screamingly funny and really tragic. Netflix would announce that it would dedicate its own series to the vengeful mother – I would already be the biggest fan.

At the end of the day, just being simple is nice unfortunately a romantic comedy and what is the need for it? Yes, a love story. With a man.

Karoline Herfurth plays a desperate single woman in her late 30s who ultimately has to find her deadly boring dream man

Ironically, at her father’s wedding, Karla meets a man she just can’t get out of her head: Ole (Aaron Altaras). Ole is a nurse, very attractive and listens to Karla’s radio show during the shift. He’s also funny, makes coffee in bed and has anything at all no problem with the fact that she is about 10 years older than him. He even ironically gives her a huge pillow for the cinema date so that she doesn’t get tense in the cinema chair! The perfect man, so to speak. And thus by far the most boring character in the whole film.

Perhaps Ole is deliberately designed as a Prince Charming decal: a largely featureless person who only exists to reflect the protagonist’s character development and to show her what she really wants – and still wants to admit to herself. Maybe he is a vehicle to subvert classic romcom clichés, according to which the great love story makes all other aspects of life pale in comparison. Because if simply something beautiful shows something, then how trivial partnerships and associated sensitivities can be in the face of miscarriages, alcoholism and trauma.

If so, I can understand that as a conscious narrative decision. Nevertheless, it doesn’t change the fact that every supposedly emotional romcom moment makes me personally want to see another scene between Karla and her sisters, another attempt at conciliation between the entire family, which completely escalates. The cast is so strong the dynamics are in this endearingly dysfunctional family so interesting – why can’t that be enough? Why Ole?

Karoline Herfurth has already proven several times that she is the Champion of German mainstream romcom is. In the case of Simply something beautiful, she should have been able to delete the “Rome”.

Tips for home cinema: The 10 best films coming to Netflix and Co. in 2022

Among other things, we talk about Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, who is supposed to bring the well-known classic about the talking wooden puppet to dark new life. It’s also about emancipation, the Will Smith’s first major role since the 2022 Oscar disaster becomes. Entertainment is guaranteed with Daniel Craig in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, while we highly recommend the horror hype Barbarian.

How did you like just something nice?